Mission Journal: South Sudan's struggle for a free press

The former guerrillas of the Sudan People's Liberation Army
(SPLA) fought a 22-year civil war for greater autonomy and civil rights for the
southern Sudanese people, culminating in South Sudan's
independence this July. But local journalists fear the former rebels turned
government officials still harbor a war mentality that is unaccustomed to
criticism, and that they are not prepared to extend the freedoms they fought
hard to attain. "We are still recovering from a war culture," Oliver Modi, chairman
of the Union
of Journalists of Southern Sudan, told me. "There is just too much
ignorance toward the press. We are not used to systems, structures--even the
media," he said, pointing to a list of eight documented cases of attacks
against the press this year.

Jacob Akol, founder of the Gurtong Peace
and Media Project, said that changing government attitudes toward the press
will be challenging given the ruling party's roots. "They all come from a
military background. They have no experience in democracy. It's not that you
can just say, 'Ah, now we are democratic.'" When the U.N.-backed Miraya FM radio station interviewed
opposition candidates in the country's state elections last year, the director general
of information, Mustafa Biong, accused the station of "treason" for granting
the interviews, Anne Bennett, Miraya FM's head of projects, said.

On the day of South Sudan's independence, SPLA military intelligence
beat up
opposition leader Onyati Adigo in the commercial capital, Juba,
for hanging posters without "requesting permission," local journalists said.
"Imagine, the day of our independence and they already block free expression," Nhial
Bol, chief editor of the private dailyThe Citizen, told me. Even worse, he
said, a senior security official told him not to write about the incident. "So
I stopped writing--what else could I do?" Bol said.

Unused to criticism, many in the new government expect the
media to simply support their efforts. "Some in the [Sudan People's Liberation
Movement] want the press to become part of the government," said journalist
Alfred Taban, who started an English daily, Khartoum
Monitor, in North Sudan's capital in 2000. "The [South Sudanese] press
is partly to blame. During the war, the southern press acted almost entirely as
an opposing voice to the Khartoum
government." The government-controlled press of northern Sudan always portrayed South
Sudan in a negative light during the civil war, while in turn, the
fledgling southern press defended the southern rebel movement. The result of
this war of words has led to a southern press unfamiliar with critical
reporting and a highly defensive new government intolerant of any disapproval.
"There is an idea here in media rooms in South Sudan
that we need not tell 'our enemies' of our weakness," said Garang John,
reporter for the state-controlled South Sudan TV. "But
I keep telling them that the enemy is gone from the north, and now we need to
look at our own enemies."

The various government security outfits, often legacies of
the wartime era, show the least tolerance and understanding toward the press,
local journalists said. "The security officials are not aware of the role of
journalists," Bol said. "Sometimes, even when you are invited by the office of
the president, they will chase you out of the room." In February, four security
officers in plain clothes severely beat The
Citizen's driver, Madeng Kout, and raided the newspaper's office after Bol
wrote a column detailing how police had not been paid for three months and had started
engaging in criminal behavior. "After I ran the story, the former security
minister threatened me over the phone and then the security came," Bol said.

Sister Cecilia Sierra Salcido, head of the Catholic Radio
Service's Bakhita
Radio, is also no stranger to the various security entities in South Sudan. Bakhita Radio is a popular Juba-based
Christian station that holds weekly political forums. Salcido has been asked on
three occasions to provide authorities with a staff list with contact details
and to stop all political programming. She has managed to continue operating despite
authorities' demands and believes a certain level of understanding is now gradually
developing between security agents and the station. The problem, she says, is
the lack of organization within the security departments. "The government
security organs are made up of many individuals with an absence of a legal
framework, so we do not know who or with what authority they interfere in the
media."

Security, good governance, and human rights issues are often
taboo areas for coverage, local journalists said. And acquiring access to
officials for information on these subjects is near impossible. "There is no
access to information," says Rumbek-based freelance journalist Manyang
Mayom, who has been detained by security on three occasions since 2006 for
his reporting. "If you approach a state official for comment on corruption
charges, they will just arrest you before you even reach the door," he
continued. Even state reporters are kept in the dark. "When the undersecretary
in the health ministry was suspended, I expected a press release to learn why.
It never came and no one, not even us, got access to the undersecretary," South
Sudan TV's Garang John said.

Media
bills, first introduced to parliament in 2007, might address the press
corps' concern over access to information and journalist protection. But many
local journalists fear the bills, which would create a press
ombudsman's office, among other things, will never be passed. "Resistance to
the media bills come from some individuals from an authoritarian background of
corruption and [who] fear exposure," said Hakim Moi, head of the Association of
Media Development in South Sudan, an
organization committed to promoting
the legislation. Information Minister Barnaba Marial disputes these claims.
"There are a lot of bills in parliament, urgent bills to be passed before the
country was born. There is no one blocking the media bill, just an influx of
bills," he said. Whatever the reason, local journalists said they feel their
working conditions remain tenuous without them. "We are working in a vacuum
right now," said Agele Benson, a freelance journalist working in Yei, a trading
town near the Ugandan border.

Without a legal framework, many in the press rely on
self-censorship to survive. "According to our experiences, if we write anything
on the dissident rebels [in South Sudan], our paper risks closure," Charles
Rehan, chairman of Juba's first independent
paper, The
Juba Post, said. Security agents confiscated
a March edition and detained their distributor for a front-page interview with
Gen. George Athor, leader of a dissident rebel group. "The security office
called us, telling us not to write about insurgents or corruption issues and
threatened to close our paper after the Athor interview," Rehan recalled. "Now
we find ourselves hiding facts deep within the paper--page six, for example. Deep
within the paragraphs is where we hide the pertinent information."

"In my personal experience, I try to write stories about
human rights, but the editor does not publish it or it gets hidden," freelance
journalist Anthony Kamba said. Despite the challenges, Kamba and other local
journalists believe press conditions have been gradually improving since the referendum,
in which southern Sudanese citizens unanimously voted for separation from North Sudan, passed in January. "In 2008, there were
rampant beatings by authorities against the press, all done with total
impunity. We have a long way to go on many levels, but we have gone far since
those days," Kamba said.

(Reporting from Juba, Yei, and Rumbek, South Sudan)

Tom Rhodes is CPJ's East Africa representative, based in Nairobi. Rhodes is a founder of southern Sudan’s first independent newspaper. Follow him on Twitter: @africamedia_CPJ